In
spite of being a vibrant multilingual society, translation studies has not developed
as much as it should have in India. There is still a wide-spread tendency among
Indian academics to conceive of translation narrowly as a process and mostly in
normative terms. Therefore, very often
in seminars and conferences, one comes across the conversations about ‘
problems’ and ‘ issues’ faced in translation often in terms of ‘ loss’ of the ‘original essence’ in translation. This
may be largely due to the stubborn persistence on the colonial notions of both
translation and literature.

There
is also tendency to take up actual activity of translation of literary texts
from Indian languages into English. While this would certainly seem a good
idea, our own limitations as non-native uses of English and largely clichéd findings
regarding ‘problems faced’ would not make
such a project very useful in terms of research. My own advice would be to
translate contemporary literary texts, theoretical and intellectual statements into
non-English languages.

However, translation studies (thankfully), since
the nineteen-eighties, has undergone a paradigm shift in the terms of
methodologies and critical approaches i.e in terms of research questions asked
about translation. Translation today can be conceived as a product generated by
the translating language (T.L) culture whose contextual reading and functional
analysis reveals a wealth of information about the historical development of
the receptor culture. Asking whether Gandhiji’s translation of John Ruskin’s UntoThis Lastis a ‘good’ translation or not as it has involved ‘loss of
essence of the original’ will not help us to understand the immense historical
and social significance of Gandhiji’s translation. It is also interesting that
this English text was retranslated into English from Gandhi’s Gujarati version
by Gandhiji’s followers.

The idea of what is meant by
a ‘literary’ text (the conventional ‘object’ of literary studies) has also
undergone a shift, largely due to the radical developments in ‘theory’ and
cultural studies. It is no longer conceived merely as a canonical work in print,
but also as a non-canonical work in other media (visual, oral, performative) in
digital or ‘analogue’ media. Hence the translated text can be thought of any
text produced by ‘intralingual’, ‘interlingual’ or ‘intersemiotic’ translation
as famously discussed by Roman Jakobson, i.e. one can study visual adaptations,
retellings in various formats. Hence, we can study graphic novel renderings, paintings,
musical compositions, cinematic adaptations, TV series or even the stage or
dance enactments of texts (like Peter Brooks’ Mahabharata) from other languages
as translations.

Translation is a decision-making
process involving choices and options at multiple levels including the selection
of the source and the target languages, the text and the author to be
translated as well as numerous strategies chosen by the translator. The
contextual analysis of translation involves deductive interpretation and
comprehension of this decision-making process in the context of social,
historical and cultural influences i.e. how have these forces impacted the
agency of the translator, while the functional analysis of translation involves
the analysis of the role of the translation in impacting the prevalent and
succeeding poetics and cultural politics of that language. Apparently, literary
research in translation studies, like literary studies in general would merge
ultimately into historiography of culture.

Hence research on
translation would basically deal with historiography of translation in Indian
languages. The research projects on historiography of translation can be
delimited in terms of the following:

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Sachin C. Ketkar (b. 1972) is a bilingual writer,
translator, editor, blogger and researcher based in Baroda, Gujarat. His recent
publication is a collection of Marathi critical articles on contemporary
Marathi Poetry, globalization and translation studies titled Changlya Kavitevarchi Statutory Warning:
Samkaleen Marathi Kavita, Jagatikikarn ani Bhashantar (2016). His Marathi
collections of poems are Jarasandhachya
Blogvarche Kahi Ansh (2010) and Bhintishivaicya Khidkitun Dokavtana, (2004). His poetry in English
include Skin, Spam and Other Fake
Encounters: Selected Marathi Poems in translation, (2011), and A Dirge for the Dead Dog and Other
Incantations (2003). Several of his writings on translation are published
as (Trans) Migrating Words: Refractions
on Indian Translation Studies (2010).

He has extensively translated from Marathi and
Gujarati.Most of his translations of
contemporary Marathi poetry are collected in the anthology Live Update: An Anthology of Recent Marathi Poetry (2005) edited by
him. Along with numerous recent Gujarati writers, he has rendered the fifteenth
century Gujarati poet Narsinh Mehta into English for his doctoral research. He
has also translated the work of the well-known contemporary Gujarati writers
like Manilal Desai, Gulammohammed Sheikh, Bhupen Khakkar, Jayant Khatri, Mangal
Rathod, Jaydev Shukla, Rajesh Pandya, Rajendra Patel, Nazir Mansuri, Ajay
Sarvaiya and Mona Patrawala. He has also translated poems of Ted Hughes and
fiction by Jorge Luis Borges and Adam Thopre’s into Marathi. He won ‘Indian
Literature Poetry Translation Prize’, awarded by Indian Literature Journal,
Sahitya Akademi, New Delhi in 2000.

He holds a doctorate from VN South Gujarat
University, Surat and works as Professor in English, Faculty of Arts, The
Maharaja Sayajirao University of Baroda, Vadodara. He is also Coordinator of
the department research project under UGC SAP DRS II on “Representing the
Region: Literary Discourses, Social Movements and Cultural Forms in Western
India, 1960-2000.